4. Justin
four
Isay a thank-you prayer to a god I’m not sure I believe in. And then I hate myself for being thankful for someone’s distress. But how else was I going to hold Clover totally abandoned in my arms?
I might be cocky and say that one-night stands are the best because you can be entirely yourself, I’m kidding myself. It’s not true. The women are either self-conscious of their bodies, or they’re trying to be who they’re not, and often they’re trying too hard to please me, when really all I’m after is actually a genuine connection. Something that would feel like a relationship, if I allowed myself to have one.
I never get that. We’re playing roles. We obey the rules. It’s fun for the hours it lasts, and then it ends, and then the game starts all over again.
Clover is different. I could tell immediately she was intrigued, attracted by the concept of not pretending to be someone we’re not.
I wonder who she’s pretending to be, out there? When she’s not in my arms.
I feel more than see her eyes flutter open and snap my gaze back to her face. I trace the silver chain around her neck and follow it to her back until I find the clover pendant tucked under her blouse and slide it back to her front. “Can I call you Clover?”
“I thought we weren’t doing the getting-to-know-each-other thing.” Her voice is raspy.
“We’re past that.” We were past that the moment the elevator stopped.
The moment I broke my promise to keep her safe.
“I like it,” she whispers. “Can we stick with it? I still want to sleep with you,” she says in a begging tone that sends my dick on a murderous trail. She’s all soft curves and softer skin, long legs, and full mouth. She’s a wet dream come true. She runs her hand inside my shirt. “I want to see your tattoo,” she says.
My voice a rasp, I answer, “Later, I promise.” I’m not getting half naked in an elevator with her. Not only because of the cameras or the fact that this thing is going to spring back to life at any time. But because she deserves better than that.
“’Kay, you can call me Clover.” Then she takes a deep breath. “You’re the only person besides my sister who knows about my claustrophobia. And you’re the first one to actually see it.”
Shit. “Not even your parents?”
She shakes her head.
“Not even douchebag?”
She frowns, then chuckles as understanding hits her. “How do you know about Tucker?”
Tucker. His name is Tucker. “I thought you wanted no names.”
“That’s his name. What difference does it make to us?”
Us. The word hangs in our bubble, its weight everything I’ve always wanted. A connection, even if just for one night. She doesn’t know it, but she’s picking my heart apart already.
“I might break the nose of every Tucker I meet from here on out,” I say, and she giggles again, and I smile back at her.
“So—what happened with douchebag?”
“How d’you know about him?”
“Your earbuds are shit.”
A smile dances on her face. “They are.” Then her eyes darken. “He cheated on me.” She turns her gaze away from me and her body tenses. “I saw them. In our bed.”
My jaw tightens “Fuck.”
There’s fire in her gaze. “Never going through that again. I’m getting your point. Although I should have seen it coming. I should have known. I should have done something earlier to fix our relationship. He fixed it for himself, I suppose. Got what he needed somewhere else.”
Now I want to punch something. Someone. “Who put that shit in your brain?”
“Facts.”
“Wasn’t facts.” She needs someone to build her back up. “I can tell you this. If you were mine, and we had hit problems, I’d take you on my lap, like how you are right now, and we’d talk it out. I’d take you on a long vacation, somewhere on the beach, somewhere sunny. Somewhere we could just be us again. I’d take you to dinner more often. Or dancing. I’d send flowers to your work. And if all that wasn’t enough, I’d sign us up for couple’s therapy. I’d do something, fucking something, to save us.”
Her jaw slackens, and she arranges her body against mine, her ass flush against my raging boner.
“What if you didn’t like having sex with me anymore? What if you wanted variety?”
Variety?A deep belly laugh escapes me. I have variety more than most guys, and that doesn’t fill the void. My laugh strangles in my throat. “Douchebag didn’t see the treasure he had in his bed, in his life, he can fuck a different woman every night or more, he’s never gonna find what he needs.” I have my reasons for not wanting a relationship, and I made peace with it. It doesn’t mean I can’t understand what it’s about. What I’ll never understand, is people who selfishly hurt others just to satisfy a basic need. It’s easy enough to be forthcoming. Look at me right now. No harm.
She stays silent for a beat, and it’s almost like I can see the wheels turning in her beautiful head. “You’d make a perfect boyfriend. A perfect life partner. We’ve already established you’d make a perfect father.”
“We?” I laugh, trying to make light of what she’s saying to me.
“Royal we,” she answers without missing a beat. “We need to find you someone.”
“Is that a royal we too? Or do I get a say?”
“I suppose you get a say.”
“Then I say no. I’m fine just the way I am.”
She tilts her head sideways. “You do look fine. Just the way you are. But do you have everything you need?”
“I have everything I need,” I boop her nose, “especially right now.”
Her lips purse adorably. “That’s a cheap save. But I’ll take it.” She takes a deep breath. “I don’t think I want to stay single, long term.”
My chest tightens. “Would be a shame,” I concede.
“But I’ll choose better next time.”
“Thought we’d already established that.”
“Royal we?” she smiles.
“No. Us we.” Warmth spreads through me as I capture the recognition in her features. “Tonight, it’s just us. And from then on, you’re staying away from assholes.”
“I’ll try.”
Time to be arrogant. And truthful. “We are going to show you what a real man is like, and if you can get someone half as good, you should be all set. Royal we.”
She blinks several times and wraps the hand that was on her belly inside my shirt. “You already showed me what a real man is like. I know.”
Something stirs deep inside me. “You haven’t seen anything,” I shoot back, trying to sound playful.
“Cocky.”
“You have no idea.”
She wiggles her ass against my dick again. “I think I do.”
Then I can’t resist it. I lean into her and take her mouth, bringing her up to me, and she gives me her tongue, and her whimpers, and her heavy breathing, and both her hands tied behind my neck. I explore her slowly, commit her taste to memory, breathe her in, drink her in. Enter her slowly, then harder, then nibble her lower lip as she digs her nails into my back and lifts her body to be flush against mine.
Fuck but she feels so good. So right. All this while we still have our clothes on, sitting in an elevator.
I break the kiss slowly, letting her come down gently from it, trailing kisses down her jaw, positioning her back into the nook of my elbow, one of her hands loosely around my neck, the other limp on her stomach, my other arm back under her knees.
Cradling her.
Committing to memory the feel of her body, of her entire being, nudged against me.
“Did something happen to you?” I ask to cool down the moment. And also because I desperately want to know, so I can help her better. “Were you stuck in a closed space before? An elevator?”
Her eyes latch onto mine. “Nope.”
“Locked in the broom closet for being a bad girl?”
“Not literally,” she answers, missing the humor in my tone.
I give her shoulder and her hip a soft squeeze that brings her tighter against me. “Tell me.”
She takes a deep breath, her head rolling against my arm as she seems to look for answers somewhere on the elevator walls. Finally, she settles for a point on my shirt, and she starts worrying the button with her fingers. “Sometimes it feels like whatever I do, it’s never good enough. Or worse, it’s wrong. I try and try and try to please, to do the right thing, but I end up rejected anyway.”
My heart clenches. “We’re not talking about douchebag anymore, are we.”
“No.” The word barely comes out of her mouth.
My mind returns to my father’s words earlier, and I measure how lucky I am to have a family who loves me unconditionally. Despite all my fuck ups. Despite how I let them down.
Despite how I don’t deserve them.
How can anyone treat her the way they do? I don’t get it. I feel anger and something else I can’t quite identify taking ahold of me. “They don’t deserve you,” I say as I bend over to gently brush her lips with mine.